Street Coffee: Four years and going strong

It was a cold Sunday (23 July) in Guarapuava, with temperatures around 6°C, but the wind made it feel colder. At about 6am, the Street Coffee crew gathered in front of Our Lady of Agony, the parish church in Santa Cruz neighbourhood. For those of us who are used to a certain degree of comfort, it is already difficult to get up in the cold weather. Imagine what it’s like for those who live on the street! With this in mind, the Street Coffee Project was created to take clothes and food to the homeless, but above all, to take the Blessed Mother’s love through someone to talk to and listen.

Initially, just the Milites Mariae group participated, offering it up as contributions to the capital of grace in preparation for the covenant of love. But it grew into something bigger, and today, the whole Boys Youth (Jumas) in Guarapuava are a part of it. In addition to the bonds we form around the shrine, this experience of reaching out to others also unites us and is in keeping with our branch motto: Schoenstatt Reaching Out. We become instruments taking Our Mother’s love to those who need it most.

After praying, we go through town looking for people who need food for the body and the spirit. On the way, we found many homeless people who often become emotional as they tell us their lives stories or moments when God touched their hearts when we prayed with everyone at each stop. At the end, everyone headed towards Santa Cruz parish for the first Mass of the day, to give thanks to God and the Blessed Mother for another Street Coffee Project day and asking that we may be united to Mary every day and that the Fire of Christ can warm our hearts.

About schoenstatt.org

Our mission is to serve the life of the International Schoenstatt family and the Church by promoting bonds of solidarity - covenant culture - and offering this service as a testimony - culture of encounter.

In all our actions, we daily hear the echoes of the words given to us by Pope Francis during the audience on 25 October 2014, "a culture of encounter is a covenant culture that creates solidarity."

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Religious Minorities in Asia – January 2018
Sometimes we might think that being Christian is difficult. But what’s certain is that it is much more difficult in some places than in others. Asia is one of these places. Here, Christianity is a minority religion, and like other minorities, Christians often suffer persecution. Let us pray that all religions, also those that are minorities, are given the freedom that sometimes today on the Asian continent, they are lacking.

About Schoenstatt

Schoenstatt is an ecclesial Movement, where everyone, each according to his individual vocation and united in covenant, serves the Church and its mission and the world God has entrusted to us.

The core of Schoenstatt's foundation is the covenant of love with Mary, the Mother of God.

This covenant of love generates culture and covenant culture is the unique expression of our way of life and work, our attachment to God, to people, to nature and culture, to the Church and the world, which always departs from the covenant of love.

Schoenstatt's commitment to this covenant culture inspires it to go out from the shrines to the existential peripheries to "sanctuarize" the world, as Pope Francis says.